My Favorite Back to School Scrapbooking Products

Over the weekend we moved my scrapbooking/office space from the corner of our living room to the corner of the master bedroom. I'm not sure I love the change...yet...but it needed to happen and we needed more space in the living room. So normally I would be creating and blogging from my living room with a whole bunch of kiddos playing around my desk. Now, after the big move, I'll be doing most of my blogging and creating behind the closed door of my bedroom. Hopefully this will be a good change for our family. This is only a temporary situation until our basement is finished. After the basement is finished I will have my own studio with huge windows and enough space for me to create and blog without interfering with our other living spaces. I often dream of having my own room. I've got plenty of ideas on my *someday I'll have my own studio* Pinterest board. It's going to be hard to narrow down all my plans for my creative space, that's a hard task that I'm willing to take on!

Since my space has been moved I've been working on lots of back to school projects. I thought I'd share my favorite collections with a "back to school" theme. There are two collections that I've been reaching for and have been using over and over.  

My favorite collections for this years back to school projects are Public Library (October Afternoon) & Tiny Tots (Bella Blvd). I love the Public Library collection for my older kiddos and the Tiny Tots is perfect for preschool/early elementary aged kids. I've created many projects with the Public Library collection. Most recently I created a set of cards for my kiddos teachers. I'll attach them to a small gift for them to give to their teachers on the first day of school. 

I also created a layout with the Public Library collection. It's one of my favorite layouts. I love how the title came together with the chipboard.

This collection goes really well with cork accents. I added some cork chipboard letters to the title and a few cork stars to the embellishment cluster.

The story behind this project is so sweet. My sister in law had come to visit one evening. My little man had just put his pajamas on and crawled onto her lap to read a Little Critter story (his favorite books). I was sitting next to them on the couch and snapped a quick photo (unbeknownst to them). It's not the best photo because it was taken at night and with my phone. When photos don't turn out very well I often change them to black and white. That simple change can make a world of difference to a "not so good" photo. Don't let a "so so" photo keep you from documenting a memory or a story that you want to tell. I thought it was so sweet to watch them reading together. I know my little man will love to look back on this when he gets a little older. He loves his aunt Kayla!!

Tomorrow I'll have a video featuring the Tiny Tot's collection from Bella Blvd. Until then you can check out THIS project I created for the launch of the Tiny Tots line.

See you tomorrow!

Elle's Studio Sketch x3

A few days ago I was asked to create a project for Elle's Studio using this sketch:
 
I immediately fell in love with this sketch. I has so many possibilities. I may have gotten a little carried a way and used this sketch more than once...three times to be exact.
Here's what I came up with using the Elle's Studio Shine collection. 

 The title "fun in the sun" is actually lots of different layers. There's a 3x4 transparency over the teal 3x4 card. I love the fun detail it adds to my title block.

  The other two layouts I created have been featured here too. HERE & HERE.

 Each time I used this sketch I used it a little bit differently. I moved the title around and added journaling differently each time.

Do you have a sketch that you've used over and over? I've already used this sketch 3 times and I plan on using it even more. 

Let's Talk Tuesday: Documenting Childhood Memories

I grew up as a child in the 80's and 90's. I love my mom dearly but she wasn't much of a photo taker. I do have photos from my childhood but not many and some of them don't coincide with childhood memories that I want to document. 

Fast forward to today...if you were to walk into my home today you would find bookshelf, after bookshelf, after bookshelf filled to capacity with books, mostly children's books. My daughter was estimating the other day that we have somewhere between 500-550 books in our house. A lot of these books I have purchased at thrift stores. We probably spend $5.00-$10.00 a week at the thrift store buying children's books. I love digging through the piles of old books and finding books that I remember reading as a child. Those are the books that I always buy. While spending time going through my grandparents photos for the "restoring old albums into pocket page scrapbooks" I've been asking myself a lot of questions about my memory keeping. 

• Am I documenting the stories that my kids will remember and that they will want to read when they are grown? 
• Are the memories that I'm documenting the ones that they will be excited to share with their children? 
• Am I taking photos of the events that they will want to remember? 

 I realized that there are memories from my childhood that I want to record even though there aren't photos to go with these memories. One of those memories is of being read to as a child. My mom is the queen of reading. She's the one who has given me and my kids the book reading (and collecting) obsession. 
I decided that even though I don't have photos of me being read to as a child I could take some photos of the books that I remember being read to me to document this memory. I grabbed a few of the books that I collected at thrift stores and got to work. I took photos of these books, printed them, wrote my journaling, and created this scrapbook page:

 I used the October Afternoon Public Library collection. I may have purchased the entire line...duplicates on some things. So, be prepared to see a lot of projects with this collection.

 I love the sticker titled "my favorite story" I knew I wanted it on this page but I was struggling to find a spot for it where it didn't get lost in the other elements of the page so I created a base for it using pieces of label stickers.

The journaling on this project reads:

Some of my very favorite memories as a child are accompanied by a book or a story. I love finding and buying books to read to my kids that my mom read to me when I was little. My most favorite are “No More Elephants” and “Don’t Forget the Oatmeal.” I’ve found many of them at thrift stores.  I also remember being told stories by my Grandma (Bair) when I would take a nap at her house. She almost always told me the story of the 3 Billy Goats Gruff. I love that such sweet memories are attached to stories that I can keep sharing.

This week I hope you will think about and hopefully document some of your childhood memories. Even if you don't have photos or can't take any photos. Get those memories written down!

Tomorrow the 3rd and final part in the series "Restoring Old Photo Albums into Pocket Page Scrapbooks" will be live. Make sure you stop by and check it out.

Have a great Tuesday!